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The Writing Process
Document Design
Grammar, Style, Punctuation, and Usage
Critical Thinking
Conducting Research
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The Writing Process
Audience
Colorado State University Writing Center
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This page provides advice about how to define and address an audience. |
How to Write a Thesis Statement
Indiana University's Writing Tutorial Services
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This page from Indiana University's writing center offers advice about how to generate a thesis with or without an assigned topic and provides examples of strong and weak thesis statements. |
Online Writing Lab
Purdue University
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A well-respected online resource, this site features handouts with examples of the writing process, from planning and drafting to proofreading. |
Paradigm Online Writing Assistant
Professor Chuck Guilford, Boise State University
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This site contains an interactive, online writer's guide and handbook, with topics such as discovering ideas for an essay and planning an essay's organization. |
Revising Prose
The Writing Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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This page provides eighteen quick reference tips and examples for editing prose. |
Roy Peter Clark's Twenty Writing Tools
Roy Peter Clark
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This is a one-page compendium of useful writing maxims by a Senior Scholar at the Poynter Institute and director of the National Writer's Workshop. |
Web Writing Workshop: How to Make Web Writing Come Alive
Ron Scheer
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Ron Scheer is a business communications expert. His main site provides advice on making Web sites easy to use. This page provides a concise synopsis of rhetoric and composition expert Richard Lanham's eight-step paramedic method for revising prose. |
Writer's Handbook
Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison
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This site offers a writer's handbook with handouts on topics important to academic writing; it also includes links to other writing centers and writing resources. |
Writer's Web
University of Richmond Writing Center
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Designed and maintained by students and faculty, this site covers a range of topics related to the writing process, from peer editing and writing with clarity and logic to writing essays for variety of disciplines. |
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Document Design
HTML Goodies
Professor Joe Burns, Southeastern Louisiana University |
| Written by a communications professor, this user-friendly site offers step-by-step tutorials on how to write HTML. |
Mike Markel's Web Design Tutorial
Bedford/St. Martin's
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| This tutorial, written by textbook author Mike Markel, shows you the step-by-step process of designing a Web site. |
Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design
Jakob Nielsen
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| Compiled by author and Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen, this page lists the top ten mistakes in Web design, as of May 1996. |
Yale Style Manual
Patrick Lynch and Sarah Horton
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| This online version of the book Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites covers all aspects of Web design, from page design to animation. |
Your Guide to Résumé Writing
JobWeb.com
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| This site compiles a list of practical tips for effective résumé writing and includes sample résumés and letters . |
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Grammar, Style, Punctuation, and Usage
General resources
The A-Z of Alternative Words
The Plain English Campaign
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Maintained by a British organization advocating increased clarity in legal and professional language, this online guide provides "hundreds of plain English alternatives to the pompous words and phrases that litter official writing." |
Big Dog's Grammar
G and S Services
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This site offers definitions, reviews, and self-tests of basic grammar concepts. |
BuzzWhack.com
WalstonOne Communications
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Created by an experienced newspaper editor, this light-hearted site is dedicated to the meaningful use of buzzwords. |
ClichéSite.com
DigitalCLICK, Inc.
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This site offers a compendium of clichés, sayings, phrases, and figures of speech complete with definitions and explanations. |
Daily Grammar
Word Place, Inc.
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On this site, you can sign up to receive free grammar lessons for five days with a quiz on the sixth day. Lessons are also archived here. |
Guide to Grammar and Writing
Charles Darling
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Maintained by Professor Charles Darling of Capital Community College, this interactive site provides guidance at the level of individual words, sentences, paragraphs, essays, and research papers. |
Language Corner
Evan Jenkins, Columbia Journalism Review
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This page features a language rules watchdog column patrolling usage offenses committed by professional writers and editors. Prior columns archived on this page can be a helpful resource for students investigating their own usage questions. |
Language Pet Peeves
Richard Lederer
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This National Public Radio site archives broadcasts featuring language expert Richard Lederer. Listeners call in to share their frustration with real (or perceived) misuses and trends in common language. Lederer offers his own expertise to shed light on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the callers' "peeves." |
Newswatch Diversity Style Guide
Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, San Francisco State University
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This style guide provides advice on appropriately handling diversity issues (including race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion) in journalistic and other forms of writing. |
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Reference works
Encarta Online Dictionary
Microsoft
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An online searchable version of the Encarta Dictionary, this site also provides pronunciation guides and links to the Encarta Encyclopedia. |
OneLook Dictionaries
Study Technologies
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This site offers word searches linked to various online dictionaries in English and other major languages. |
WWWebster Dictionary
Merriam-Webster
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This site offers an online, searchable version of the Collegiate Dictionary and Collegiate Thesaurus. |
yourDictionary.com
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A comprehensive site of world language and linguistic resources available on the Web, including specialty and world language dictionary searches. |
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ESL Resources
Dave's ESL Café
Professor Dave Sperling
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This site offers a wide range of resources for students and teachers of English as a second language, including language learning resources, job postings, and discussion forums. |
The ESL Loop
The Linguistic Funland TESL
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The ESL Loop is a collection of sites relevant to teaching and learning English on the Web. |
TOPICS Online Magazine
Sandy and Thomas Peters
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This site offers Topics, an online magazine by and for students of English as a second language; it includes articles written by those with second language learning and multi-cultural experience. |
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Critical Thinking
Critical Response
Harvard University Writing Center
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This page contains a list of questions that readers can use to formulate a critical response to a text. |
What Is an Argument?
Harvard University Writing Center
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This page defines the term argument and provides questions that can help you evaluate arguments. |
Writer's Web
University of Richmond Writing Center
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This section of the University of Richmond's Writing Center site provides examples of analysis and argument. |
Writing Argumentative Essays
Bill Daly, ESLPlanet.com
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This section of the ESLPlanet site is designed to teach second-language students how to write short, argumentative essays. |
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Conducting Research
General Resources
Research Papers
Purdue University Online Writing Lab
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This section of the Purdue University OWL offers guidelines for finding, evaluating, and documenting sources, as well as advice about writing research papers. |
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Evaluating sources
Evaluating Quality on the Net
Hope N. Tillman, Director of Libraries, Babson College
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This page provides an article on how to evaluate Web sources, with links to library and research resources. |
Evaluation of Web Sites Tutorial
Ohio State University Libraries
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This site offers a tutorial to help you evaluate Web sites for research; it includes thorough explanations and examples. |
Ten C's For Evaluating Internet Sources
Betsy Richmond, McIntyre Library, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire
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This page provides a checklist for evaluating Web sources based on the author's criteria. |
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Search engines
AltaVista
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This search engine is one of the largest and most comprehensive; it allows for searches in numerous languages, by date, and by domain. |
Ask Jeeves
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This search engine allows you to ask specific questions about your subject. |
Excite
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The "Zoom In" feature offered by this search engine suggests other specific terms to use for refining and improving your search. |
Google
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This search engine has a clean interface and offers strong support for users. |
Hotbot
Lycos, Inc.
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This search engine includes links to directories and search resources. |
Lycos
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The advanced search feature for this search engine allows you to search for sources in different languages by type of media. |
Metacrawler
InfoSpace, Inc.
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One of the first metasearch engines, Metacrawler searches the Web by sending queries simultaneously to multiple Web search engines. |
NorthernLight
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This search engine organizes the results of your search into subcategories. |
Search Engine Watch
Internet.com
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This site reviews and rates search engines. It also reports the latest trends on existing search engines. |
Yahoo!
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Yahoo! has one of the oldest, most comprehensive subject directories. |
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Directories
Argus Clearinghouse
Internet Public Library
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This site provides access to guides, organized by topic, which describe and evaluate Web resources. |
Infomine
University of California, Riverside Library
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This site is a virtual library, offering access to databases, electronic journals and books, and other research resources of interest to university students and faculty. |
Internet Public Library
University of Michigan School of Information
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This public service site features a directory of resources and advice about searching the Web. |
Librarians' Index to the Internet
The Library of California
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Created and maintained by librarians, this site offers a searchable, annotated subject directory of Web resources that have been selected and evaluated. |
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Archives
American Memory
Library of Congress
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This site offers links to the digital versions of selected holdings relevant to American history and culture, including photographs, manuscripts, rare books, maps, recorded sound and moving pictures. |
Avalon Project
Yale Law School
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The Avalon Project site offers digital versions of documents relevant to Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. |
Electronic Text Center
University of Virginia Library
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This site offers access to the digital version of holdings in humanities, including text and images. |
Eurodocs
Richard Hacken, European Studies Bibliographer, Brigham Young University Library
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This site offers links to a selection of Western European historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. |
Online Books Page
John Mark Ockerbloom, University of Pennsylvania
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This site links to more than 14,000 English works that are available online and for free. |
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Government and news sites
Government sites
Fedstats
United States Federal Government
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This site provides links to official statistical information published by federal agencies. |
Thomas Legislative Information
The Library of Congress
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This site provides a public record of federal legislative activity and includes searchable databases of daily government activities. |
United Nations
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Offered in several languages, this site provides information, resources, and news about the United Nations and its operations. |
U.S. Census Bureau
United State Department of Commerce
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This site includes information, resources, data, and links related to the work of the United States Census Bureau. |
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News sites
AJR NewsLink
American Journalism Review and NewsLink Associates
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A joint venture between a magazine and an online research and consulting firm, this site includes articles from American Journalism Review and links and resources for news worldwide. |
CNN
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The official site of the Cable News Network (CNN), including links to the Asian and European editions. |
Kidon Media-Link
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A directory of newspapers and other news sources on the Internet, this site has worldwide coverage on pages organized by continent and country. |
New York Times
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This site provides the online version of the New York Times newspaper, including searchable archives. |
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Web and e-mail forums
CataList
L-Soft international, Inc.
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This official catalog of LISTSERV lists allows you to browse, search, and get information about more than 45,000 LISTSERV lists on the Internet. |
Google Groups
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Google's acquisition of DejaNews allows you to access Usenet data since 1995 and to add your own comments to the more than 650 million messages already posted. |
Topica
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This site allows users to receive electronic newsletters or subscribe to e-mail discussion lists covering a wide range of topics and interests. |
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Each section on the left contains carefully selected links to resources that can help you in your composition course.
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